If you're running in "the cloud", you should _always_ be able to destroy your instances and have them auto-rebuild from configuration management and a persistent object storage system (git repo + S3 or Google Nearline).

do you have any guides or tutorials I could possibly follow to have a setup like that? I'm working on configuring a site and would like the ability to 1) scale as quickly as possibly or 2) rebuild in event of total failure.

I just don't even know where to begin. Is this something I could stand up locally and push to like s3, spin up a new server and install 1 thing and have it pull the configs and software installs down?

Any suggestions?

> I just don't even know where to begin. Is this something I could stand up locally and push to like s3, spin up a new server and install 1 thing and have it pull the configs and software installs down?

Yes. You could use shell scripts, Ansible, Salt, Puppet, whatever. I'm fond of Ansible or shell scripts, depending on complexity.

Start here: http://www.opsschool.org/en/latest/config_management.html

As a couple of the other users have mentioned, Ansible is a nice starting point. Check out https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/43-19-minutes-with-ansibl... for a quick intro.

Its a semi-religious topic, so you will get varied and loud opinions.

My opinion is ansible. Basically python + yml, you list out steps to set up your server. Takes a few minutes longer round 1, but you can remake the server in 60 seconds in 6 months. Lots of ansible tutorials around, try it out..

Source code lives in a repo

user data lives in redundant databases / storage service

server setup lives in a repo via bash scripts or ansible etc (and bake that into an ami or container)

setup your launch-configuration for your servers to setup all of the above and you can destroy and spin up servers on a whim

Absolutely right. That's what the purest essence of the "cloud" is.